"Vladimir Putin was sworn in for a third term as Russian president, and France's presidential election continued the trend of losses for incumbent European governments when French President Nicolas Sarkozy lost to socialist challenger Francois Hollande."
"For Russia, the recreation of a union is a strategic necessity. As Putin put it, the fall of the Soviet Union was a geopolitical catastrophe. Russia needs the economic integration, particularly given the new economic strategy of post-Soviet Russia..."
"The balance of forces around Syria would be different if the historically new, shared sovereignty model of the European Union had reached out to embrace Turkey, as it has been promising to do - incredibly, in both senses of the word - for nearly fifty years, since the association agreement of 1963."
"For centuries, the dilemma facing Iran (and before it, Persia) has been guaranteeing national survival and autonomy in the face of stronger regional powers like Ottoman Turkey and the Russian Empire."
"What they are doing since they came into power is morbid. It is extremely morbid to sit in power and deconstruct the state. It is morbid to have a parliament without parliamentary democracy, so that every day we witness autocracy and arrogance..."
The text of the agreement on regional representation of Kosovo, reached during the round of the Belgrade-Priština dialogue that ended in Brussels on Feb. 24.
United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon presented his latest regular report on the UN mission in Kosovo, UNMIK, to the UN Security Council.
"As far as official Belgrade is concerned, this is an official confirmation that it cannot control the political will of the citizens in northern Kosovo, which is not bad in the context of political conditions that Germany and other EU member states are imposing on Serbia."
A spokesman for the NATO troops in Kosovo, KFOR, says that this international mission "does not think there are parallel and illegal institutions in northern (Serb-dominated) Kosovo".
It’s not very easy to maintain a good reputation and tradition over a long period of time, especially if you are on the competitive battlefield of the capital’s culinary scene.